2.Many
of us would point to Satan, or to the moral decline of our nation, or to
society's influences that diminish the role of God, as our greatest enemies.

3.However,
I believe that our most dangerous threat doesn't come from outside the
faith.Instead, our greatest enemy is
complacency and apathy in the hearts of believers.Apathy is the enemy that is destroying the church.

ILLUSTRATION:

Several years ago an "Apathy
Club" was formed on a certain college campus.The officers of the club advertised a meeting of the
membership.Not one soul showed up.Explanation: They were too apathetic to
attend.

4.Perhaps
that story causes us to laugh.Yet,
apathy is a serious spiritual virus that is invading the church.

5.What
is apathy?The dictionary defines
apathy as "lack of feeling or emotion; impassiveness; lack of interest or
concern; indifference."

6.Do
you believe that some Christians are living apathetic spiritual lives?I do.

a.Although
lost people are living all around us, some of us don't care enough to go out
and help bring them to the Lord.

b.Although
people are in poor physical health, some of us don't care enough to call them,
visit them, or pray for them.

7.Presently,
would you say that you have a great spiritual passion for the work of the Lord,
or are you in a spiritual lull?

a.In
(Matthew 26), Jesus, while in the garden of
Gethsemane, asked His disciples to keep watch while He went to pray.After prayer, Jesus returned and found His
disciples asleep.After rebuking them,
Jesus went off again to pray.When He
returned, He found them asleep again.Three times Jesus left and returned to find His disciples sleeping.

b.How
often has Jesus checked on you and found you sleeping, instead of serving
Jesus?

BRETHREN, WE NEED TO STOP SLEEPING ON THE
JOB AND START LIVING PASSIONATELY FOR JESUS AND FOR THE WORK THAT HE HAS CALLED
US TO DO.

THIS MORNING, I WILL OFFER TWO WAYS ON HOW
WE CAN AVOID LIVING COMPLACENT AND APATHETIC SPIRITUAL LIVES.

I.FIRST, TO AVOID LIVING COMPLACENT AND
APATHETIC SPIRITUAL LIVES, WE MUST MAKE A COMMITMENT.

1.Why do you suppose there are close to one
hundred million church members in America, and yet they are not making the
moral and spiritual impact they should?

2.Why is it that on Sunday morning thousands
of churches have more empty pews than full?

3.If God is really a prayer-answering God,
and if He meant for us to ask, seek, and knock, why is there so little genuine
praying going on?

4.If you and I believe there is a heaven and
a hell, why do we keep so quiet about the gospel of Jesus Christ?If "there is no other name under heaven
given among men, whereby we must be saved," then why are we not sharing
the message of His amazing grace?Why
are we keeping the Good News to ourselves?

5.There is a common answer to all of those
questions.And the answer is that God's
people, most of them, have made a decision about Jesus…but have never made a
commitment to Him.

6.There is a vast difference between a
decision to do something and a commitment.

7.Many people who are saved were convicted
by the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God and made these kinds of decisions:

a."I
don't want to go to hell."

b."I
want to go to heaven when I die."

c."I'm
sick and tired of this mess I'm in."

d."I'm
upset about the way I've been living."

e."I
want help, and I want a new life."

8.They made a decision to receive the Lord
Jesus Christ as their Savior.They did
not want to spend eternity in hell.They wanted to enter heaven; they wanted to leave that disgusting old
life.They desired God's forgiveness,
so they received it.They invited Jesus
Christ into their lives, and were baptized for the forgiveness of their sins,
and that was a definite decision.But
yet, many of these Christians are not living fruitful and devoted lives.Why?

9.Because no one explained to them the
difference between a decision to do something and a commitment to the Person,
Jesus Christ.

10.As
Christians, we must not only make a decision to follow Jesus, we must commit
our lives to Him.

"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower.
Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough
money to complete it?For if he
lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it
will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to
finish.'"Or suppose a king
is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and
consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming
against him with twenty thousand?If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is
still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.In the same way, any of you who does
not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:28-33).

a.In
this passage, Jesus is talking about commitment.He is saying that we must count the cost before we become His
disciples.In other words, He is
saying, if we are not willing to give up everything we have for Him, then we
might as well not even start.Commitment is vitally important to Jesus.

11.What
does commitment mean?

a.There are about ten different Greek words
that are translated commitment in the New Testament.Without going into much detail, commitment means, "to turn
something over to someone."It
implied committing it to them, yielding to them, surrendering to them, abandoning
it to them, entrusting it to them, and placing it at their disposal.

b.When a person makes a commitment in the
New Testament, it is a fully devoted commitment.We cannot be partially committed, or sort of committed.We are either committed or not committed.

12.My
friends, many of us have already made the decision to follow Jesus, now it is
time for us to commit our lives to Him.

II.SECOND, TO AVOID LIVING COMPLACENT AND
APATHETIC SPIRITUAL LIVES, WE MUST RECAPTURE OUR ZEAL FOR SPIRITUAL LIVING.

1.In (Jn. 2:12-25),
Jesus became upset with some people who were turning God’s House into a market
place, so He drove them all out of the temple courts.He got rid of the sin and corruption that were polluting God’s
House.

2.Have you ever wondered what motivated
Jesus to clear out the temple courts?The answer is found in (Jn. 2:17).

His disciples remembered
that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

3.It was Jesus' Zeal for God and spiritual
living that motivated Him to cleans the temple.I wonder how many of us, after seeing the sin and corruption in
the temple courts, would have just walked on by and did nothing?I wonder how many of us would have just
ignored the situation because we didn’t have an interest or a desire to deal
with it?

4.Jesus had the heart to do something about
it.He had so much zeal and enthusiasm
for God and spiritual living that He couldn’t just ignore the corruption that
was polluting God’s House.His zeal
prompted Him to get involved.

5.Just as Jesus was zealous for spiritual
living and for the things of God, we must be zealous as well.

6.What is zeal?

a.Zeal
is an enthusiastic and diligent pursuit of God and His will.We should be so excited and thrilled to be
children of God, that we crave and desire to fervently serve Him every day of
our lives.Amen!

The
Psalmist had this desire for God when He said in (Ps. 42:1, 2)“As the deer pants for streams of
water, so my soul pants for you, O God.My soul thirsts for God…”

8.I came across an illustration that may
help us to understand better what zeal is.

ILLUSTRATION:

An interviewer once asked J. B.
Priestly, the famous English Novelist, “How is it that you have become so
successful, but your fellow classmates never had much success.”

Mr. Priestly replied, “It is not because
of my ability that I became successful and my classmates didn’t—we all had the same
ability.I became successful and they
didn’t because many of them only toyed with the idea of becoming a writer, but
I cared like blazes.”

9.Zeal is not only an enthusiastic and
diligent pursuit of God and His will, but it is also caring and serving God
like blazes.

10.I
believe that there are many people in churches today who have a genuine zeal
and love for God.However, I also
believe that there are some people who have lost their spiritual zeal and
desire to serve Him.

11.If
you have lost your spiritual zeal and desire for Christian living, here is how
you can recapture it.

a.To recapture our zeal, we must start
refocusing our lives on Jesus.

ILLUSTRATION:

On March 6, 1987, Eamon Coughlan, the
Irish world record holder at 1500 meters, was running in a qualifying heat at
the World Indoor Track Championships in Indianapolis.With two and a half laps left, he was tripped.He fell, but he got up and with great effort
managed to catch the leaders.With only
20 yards left in the race, he was in third place—good enough to qualify for the
finals.

While finishing the race, Coughlan
looked over his shoulder to the inside, and, seeing no one, he let up.But another runner, charging hard on the
outside, passed Coughlan a yard before the finish, thus eliminating him from
the finals.Coughlan’s great comeback
effort was rendered worthless by taking his eyes off the finish line.

Often times in our lives, we run with a
lot of zeal and energy in our Christian walk.And after running so hard for so long it is easy to take our eyes off of
Jesus and let up and try to coast into heaven.Brethren, if we lose our zeal and enthusiasm for the Lord, we may not
finish the race.The Lord has called us
to remain faithful to the very end.We
are to finish with the same amount of zeal that we started with.We must focus on Jesus and fervently remain
zealous to the end.Nothing in this
world is more important than fervently loving and serving our Master.

12.When
we put Jesus first in our lives, we will become zealous for Him.

13.The
Apostles in (Acts 5:42) were so zealous for Jesus
that the Bible says that, “Day after day, in the temple courts and
from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news
that Jesus is the Christ.”

14.That
is the kind of zeal and enthusiasm that we are to have as Christians.

15.If
you feel that your zeal tank is running low or is on empty, then I would like
to encourage you to fill your tank back up with Jesus.When we start refocusing upon Jesus and our
commitment to Him, then our zeal will return.

CONCLUSION:

1.In
closing, apathy is the greatest enemy of the church today.Many people have lost their enthusiasm and
zeal for the Lord and His work.

2.Brethren,
we need to start living passionately for Jesus and the work that He has called
us to do.

a.To avoid living complacent and apathetic
spiritual lives, we must make a commitment to our Lord Jesus Christ.We have made the decision to follow Him, now
we must make a commitment to Him.And,
we must recapture our zeal for spiritual living.

3.This
morning, if you would like to dedicate your life to Jesus, and be a genuine
follower of His, please come now as we stand and sing.